


To be happy

by flightinflame



Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: BAMF Amanda Brotzman, Cinnamon Roll Dirk Gently, Multi, Pack Dynamics, Polyamorous Pack, Protective Siblings, Romance Novel, Sentinel/Guide, Soul Bond, Team as Family, Teasing, Unconventional Families, unconventional soul bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-22
Updated: 2018-09-22
Packaged: 2019-07-15 16:43:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16067180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flightinflame/pseuds/flightinflame
Summary: Amanda's life isn't going how she planned for.Her romance life was somewhere between 'it's complicated' and 'this works for us'.She was pretty sure that living in the woods with a bunch of not-actually-vampires was not what she was picturing when she'd been fifteen and devouring the Scandal by Moonlight series.It's better.





	To be happy

**Author's Note:**

> My version of sentinel/guide is a form of soul bonding - sentinels have extremely heightened senses, meaning they often get overwhelmed by their sensory input, and a guide (often their soulmate, but can be another guide) is needed to help calm them and help them focus. Soulbonds are often, although not always, romantic.

"Drummer?" Came a voice from Amanda's lap, and she glanced down for a moment to see that Vogel had wriggled slightly so that he was pressing his face against her thigh, through the jeans. He gazed up at her, almost cross eyed.  
"Yeah Vogel?" she asked, picking up another hairband and tying it around the finished braid, then reaching out to grab another chunk of hair.  
"I can see up your nose."  
"Thanks Vogel," she muttered, ruffling his hair. He leaned into the touch, and he grinned up at her. Behind her she heard an amused huff from Martin, his legs on either side of her shoulders to keep her upright. Gripps was finishing his beer and Cross was staring intently at the fire, occasionally throwing small bits of wood into it. Beast was asleep on a blanket beside Gripps, who had taken the opportunity to paint her talons. The air smelled of grease and smoke and her Rowdies. At least it did to her, but she knew that Martin and Vogel could sense more, more even than Cross or Gripps.

"Drummer?" Vogel asked again.  
"You can still see up my nose?" she asked, smiling softly. At times like this the younger Rowdy reminded her more of her brother than anything.  
"Well, yeah," he agreed, before squirming in her lap again, half rolling over and then yelping when it caused a tug on his hair. "But I wanted to ask, are you happy?"  
"I thought you guys could tell stuff like that," Amanda pointed out, waving over at Cross and Gripps - to show this was a them-thing not a sentinel-thing - Vogel hadn't exactly attended any kind of class in high school teaching you how sentinels and guides differed, what with not going to high school. She felt a faint flutter of rage at the thought of her pack being chained up and experimented on, and Martin growled low behind her.  
"Steady Drummer girl, you ain’t never gonna finish his hair if you give him any more to eat, boy's already practically vibrating."

"We get what's there-" Vogel tried to explain, frowning a little as though registering his own words didn't answer the question.  
"Firing of neurons in the amygdala," Gripps added.  
"We feel you freaking the fuck out!" Cross joined in.  
"Yeah, we get shit like fear an' anger and all that tasty stuff," Martin answered. "Peaks and stuff. But we don't..."  
"Icarus," Vogel muttered, and Cross snorted, and Martin shook his head.

"What about Dirk?"  
"Blackwing fucked it up good and he didn't even taste right!" Cross muttered, throwing half a bottle of beer onto the fire. It exploded, and Gripps yelled in fright. Amanda stared at her hands, glancing down, horrified to see shards of glass embedded, felt them dig in throughout her body. She took a few deep breaths, trying to control it.   
"Boys?" she called out, and instantly they were on her, Martin pulling her back.  
"Dinner time," she heard, above the pain of the glass that had dug into her leg. 

She surrendered as they fed off her, and Martin pulled her onto his lap when the images receded, the shards of glass vanishing into nothing. Vogel looked at her, then ran off to do a lap of the field, the sheer energy he had received a bit much for him. 

Martin looked utterly calm. A glass had exploded next to him, and she was sure she had screamed, and yet he wasn't shaken. This was the kind of stuff you did to torture sentinels, and he looked okay.  
"What about Dirk?" she made herself ask, already sure she wouldn't like the answer.

"They pumped him full of chemicals-"  
"Hydrocortisone and epinephrine," Gripps supplied.  
"And threw him to us for a few weeks. Wanted to know how much we'd eat and shit, plus I'm guessing he pissed off their pet sadist."   
"Fucking Priest gonna fucking bash his face in-" Cross muttered, and Amanda swallowed slightly.  
"We ate off him to start with but... background emotion's harder to get. Like, we can feed off sadness, but not depression. An' with an implant in Icarus's arm pumpin' him full of shit-"  
"Hydrocortisone and epinephrine," Gripps insisted.  
"Yeah, that shit, well, he got hard to eat off of. Plus it... it fuckin puts you off your food, you know?" Martin muttered, gazing at the fire. She knew that was a trick Sentinels did sometimes, overwhelm one sense to block out others. She wondered if he was hearing Dirk's screams.  
"But aint none of the Rowdies starvin' on my watch," he muttered. "And that means you too drummer girl."

Amanda nodded slowly, reaching to run her fingers through his hair. Martin leaned into the touch slightly, and Vogel returned, half his hair braided and the rest sticking up in random directions, a bright grin on his face.  
"I'm happy Vogel," she promised him, and if anything his grin grew brighter.

"Thanks boss," he grinned, and she reached out for him.  
"You want me to fix up the rest of your hair?"  
He tilted his head to the side, like he was considering it, then shook his head and curled up so that he was resting on her lap. He nuzzled into her, and she gave in and ran her fingers through his hair.

Martin snorted softly behind her.  
"You spoil him," he muttered, as though he didn't do exactly the same.  
"I want you boys happy-" she mumbled half to herself, and then grinned. "Are you happy?"  
"I guess so," Vogel answered. "Like it here. 's better-" he cut himself off, then nodded determinedly to himself. "Like it here."  
"Aint no one messing with us at all," Martin agreed. "And we got you drummer girl."

Vogel got to his feet again, tired of petting, and pulled at her arms.   
"Wanna dance."  
She stumbled to get up, laughing slightly. Martin had his eyes closed, scenting the air occasionally, but he didn't seem worried. Cross grabbed his crowbar, knocking it against an empty oil can to set a beat, and Vogel jumped around.

It didn't take long for Amanda to join him, whooping in sheer delight before she threw back her head and howled. The rest of the group picked up the call, Beast shifting in her sleep to call her support.

***

Eventually, even Vogel admitted to being tired, and the six of them piled into the van. Amanda took first watch - she'd wake the other guide in a couple of hours, and then Cross would wake up. Martin tended to drive all day so he stayed out of the rotation, and Vogel liked watching the sun rise. She glanced in the rearview mirror at the tangle of limbs, and then glanced at her phone to see Dirk had sent her a message. 

Opening it she was faced with a picture of Todd asleep on the bed, with a small dog asleep on his chest. Her brother looked peaceful.  
"It's helping us with the case, can I keep it?" Dirk had written underneath, and she grinned, sending back a quick reply.  
"You probably should, it's your soul mate and no one else wants it."

Dirk replied with three crying with laughter emoji and one thumbs up one. Amanda turned the radio on quietly - neither Vogel or Martin could sleep in silence - and then checked stuff on the internet, sending some interesting looking webpages to Dirk.

She kept thinking about Vogel's question.

She was happy.

The irony of the thing wasn't lost on her. Her brother, who had always said her belief in soulmates and that kind of stuff was childish and ridiculous, was practically married to the weirdest sentinel she'd ever met (and considering the two she dated, that was going some). Whereas after a lifetime of reading romances about soulmates, about a guide finding their sentinel and everything fitting, her own romance life was somewhere between 'it's complicated' and 'this works for us'.

She was pretty sure that living in the woods with a bunch of not-actually-vampires was not what she was picturing when she'd been fifteen and devouring the Scandal by Moonlight series. Being part of a pack with another guide, two sentinels and a neutral wasn't the romance told in 'Sentinel Swept Away in Lust's Storm' or the Rogue series - although catch Martin at the right time and the hero of 'A Rogue at His Leisure' 'A Rogue for Her Pleasure' and 'A Rogue Without Measure' definitely had some work to do to measure up.

Admittedly some of the stories she'd found online came a little closer to this - 'A Guide's Harem' perhaps, or 'Secrets of the Sentinels' - but those stories had still had soulmates, just one guide lucky enough to have more than one. And those sentinels had been cowed, quiet, respectful. Trapped in a room with no prospect of leaving, she'd thought that was romantic. Now, she shuddered at the thought of any of her boys being that broken. That obedient. She'd die before she let any of them become the kind of sentinel she had once dreamed of.

Not that she thought she could deal with any of them alone. Not even Gripps. That wasn't how this thing worked, they didn't do the stuff they were meant to. It wasn't that she didn't have a soulmate. The sense of right that Todd described when he was close to Dirk was one she felt too - only she felt it for all four of her boys.

And when time came to curl up among them, let Gripps take over the job of keeping them safe for a few hours - well, she knew she'd told them the truth. She was happier now than she ever had been, and she'd fight to keep it that way.


End file.
